Bites from other Blogs

Thin, crispy and buttery, Flo Braker’s Pain d’Amande Cookies are simple, yet delicious. She generously shared the recipe with David Lebovitz, along with some great commentary on how the final version of the recipe was developed. The cookies specifically call for using a large crystal sugar, like raw sugar or turbinado sugar – because the sugar crystals add to the overall texture and crunch of the cookies. That said, its the way that the cookie dough is sliced that really allows them to bake up to be super crispy, not just the sugar used.

Snickerdoodles are sugar cookies that are rolled in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar before baking, giving them a distinctive look and adding a slight crispness to the finished cookies. The Repressed Pastry Chef used the same technique to make Snickerdoodle Muffins, rolling the balls of muffin dough in cinnamon sugar before baking them. The process is a little messier than it is for the cookies alone, but the results are well worth giving it a try.

Light, sweet pavlova is a great dessert because it is so versatile. The meringue can be topped with almost anything you can think of, although whipped cream and berries tend to be the standard. 17 and Baking put together some Mini Cocoa and Banana Pavlovas for a variation on the original. The chocolate and banana combination goes very well together and makes the naturally light dessert taste a little richer.

Fans of peanut butter cups everywhere might want to take note of the Chocolate Peanut Butter Torte at Annie’s Eats. It looks like a giant peanut butter cup, with a chocolate cookie crust on the bottom and sides, a peanut-topped chocolate “lid” on the top, and a salty-sweet peanut butter filling in the middle. The recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking From My Home To Yours and looks so rich that it should probably be eaten in small slices – but it’s probably got the same addictive quality as peanut butter cups, so you might expect to have to have a second slice, too.

Michael Ruhlman has got cornbread down. Not only does his recipe for Jalapeno Cornbread use what looks like a foolproof ratio of ingredients, he fried up slices in bacon fat to make a crispy, savory, spicy version that he served for breakfast. The bread is packed with jalapeno peppers, but if you want to tone it back some you can use fewer, or you could experiment with using different types of peppers. You might want to keep the frying in bacon fat part, however. It might not be the very healthiest way to eat cornbread, but I think the flavor will make up for it!